Friday, October 30, 2009

This is the fourth book in the popular You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You series. Hoberman describes this as a “read together/read-aloud book.” The “very short scary tales” in this book, written in rhythmic, rhyming verse, would be perfect for a choral reading activity in an elementary classroom. They’d also be wonderful stories for a parent and child to read together—especially at this time of year. Children are sure to delight in reading the book’s thirteen tales about zombies, a ghoul, a witch and her broomstick, trick or treating, a ghost and a mouse, and goblins, gremlins, demons, and devils.

Here’s an excerpt from Goblins, Gremlins, Demons, and Devils

There are goblins in the garden.There are gremlins in the glen.There are demons in the cellar.There are devils in the den.They are crawling in the windows.They are creeping in the doors.They are sliding down the chimney.They are slipping through the floors.

Oh, we wish we knew some magicThat would get us out of here,Or a secret spell to corner themAnd make them disappear!

All of the scary stories for two voices close in the same fashion—with the characters reading to each other.

The ending from The Ogre and the Giant

Since the day isWarm and breezy,Why don’t we justTake it easy?

Stretch out onThe sandy beach.

Take a sunbath.Eat a peach.

Find a storybookOr two.You read to me.I’ll read to you.

The poems for reading together aren’t really terribly scary tales—but they would be lots of fun to read aloud with someone…at any time of the year. Michael Emberley adds just the right touches of ghoulish humor with his mixed-media illustrations.

The rhyming verses and illustrations included in this poetry collection are more silly and light-hearted in nature than they are dark and scary. The poems’ topics include a child talking about the costume he’ll wear when he goes trick-or-treating; a ghost and goblin ball; a dancing ghost; a Halloween quiz; a recipe for goblin punch; the rather gross dishes on a witch’s dinner menu; a mummy who drives a school bus; and Doctor Frankenstein going food shopping at the market.Halloween Hoots and Howls would be a fun collection to share with young children in the classroom—or at home.

Los Gatos Black on Halloween is one of those picture poetry books in which the art provides a perfect backdrop for the verses. The textured paintings with soft blurry edges and mostly muted colors contain plenty of macabre images of skeletons (los esqueletos), witches (las brujas), phantoms (los fantasmas), the dead (los muertos) and monsters (los monstruos) to set kids shivering with delight.

Los Gatos Black on Halloween is a book-length poem written in English and Spanish about black cats and ghosts and skeletons and other spooky beings making their way to a haunted casa on the last night of October. There they all crowd into the Haunted Hall where they play music and dance and have a grand time…until they hear loud RAPS on the door. Then…La puerta creaks…it opens wide.The things are coming. Run and hide!They hold up bags, yell “TRICK OR TREAT!”Los monstruos beat a quick retreat.

The thing that monsters most abhorAre human ninos at the door!Of all the horrors they have seen,The WORST are kids on Halloween!

This is an excellent story in verse that would be a wonderful book to read aloud. Montes proves herself to be adept at writing rhythmic verse. Her lines scan well. She uses a rich vocabulary of English words—and includes some interesting rhyming pairs: gleam/scream, stalks/mocks, parade/invade, waltz/somersaults, gasps/unclasps, abhor/door.

The book could serve as an excellent introduction to the Spanish language for young children. Even kids who don’t know any Spanish will be able to easily figure out the non-English words interwoven in the text because of the context clues and illustrations.

Los Gatos Blackon Halloween was the Pura Belpre Award Winner for Illustration and an Honor Book for Narrative in 2008. The book includes a glossary with a pronunciation key.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

From the Academy of American Poets: Whether you're heading to a party with a literary theme or simply trying to impress an English teacher this Halloween, here are a few inexpensive costume ideas worth trying on.

Friday, October 23, 2009

I had planned to write reviews of Halloween poetry books for today. I didn’t get around to doing that for a good reason. Yesterday, Grace Lin and I went to the Wellesley Booksmith to see Mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston. Mary Ann and Linda are on tour talking about their outstanding new poetry anthology The Tree That Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science, and Imagination. (Click here to see where Mary Ann and Linda will be in upcoming weeks.)

After their book signing, Mary Ann and Linda invited Grace and me to have dinner with them and Joanne Myszkowski, who was taking them around to different events in Massachusetts. We had a fabulous dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant just two doors down from the book store. We all had a grand time eating and talking. I didn’t return home until 10:30—so I just didn’t have the energy to work on several book reviews. I decided to post an original poem today instead.

Linda Winston & Mary Ann Hoberman

I’m dedicating my poem Dragonfly to Mary Ann and Linda in honor of their new book. Dragonfly is a poem I wrote for Docile Fossil, a collection that I’ve been working on for the past year.

This month "Small Graces: A Painting a Month to Benefit the FCB" features another fabulous painting by the talented and generous author/illustrator Grace Lin. This is the 10th painting to be auctioned on eBay as a benefit for our programs in under-served schools.

Here's how it works: Every month a small (5x5 inch), unpublished, original painting will be auctioned on eBay with 100% of the proceeds to support the FCB's author/illustrator visits and residencies in urban schools. Each painting will illustrate a bit of wisdom, a proverb, a "small Grace."

This month's painting (above), painted in gouache on watercolor paper, is on auction beginning today, Monday, October 19 through Friday, October 23. To bid on this painting, click on this ebay link.

For those who find original art from children's books beyond their budget, this is a great way to buy affordable art! Please spread the word and bid!

Click here to view the other Small Graces paintings that have been sold at auction.

Friday, October 16, 2009

It’s that witchy time of year when kids start thinking about Halloween, trick-or-treating, skeletons, vampires, and other scary things going bump in the night. Today, I have three witch poems for you. I wrote For Sale, the first poem posted below, for my collection of humorous fairy tale poems. I think you’ll be able to figure out “which witch” of fairy tale fame is referred to in the poem.

I posted the other two poems previously at Wild Rose Reader.

FOR SALE

A cottage made of gingerbread.The owner witch was just found dead.She left it to her brother Fred.He doesn’t want it. Freddie said:“Please sell the house at any price.I do not want one made with spice—A candy coated, sticky sweetOld cottage that lost kids will eat.It’s just one room—that’s way too small…And thirty miles from WARLOCK MALL.I shop there almost every day.Please sell the house without delay.And with the money that I getI’ll buy a brand new jumbo jetEngine powered zigzag zoomSilver bristled sonic broom.”

THERE WAS A WITCH

There was a witch who liked to raceHer supersonic broom through space.At six o’clock last Friday nightShe blasted off at speed of light.She whizzed past Mercury and Mars…Then headed off toward distant stars.Across the galaxy she sped,A black peaked helmet on her head.An interstellar traveler, sheExplored the Milky Way with glee.She chased swift comets here and there.She watched bright supernovae flare.She zipped through clouds of cosmic dust…A witch bewitched by wanderlust.There was a witch, I’m sad to say,Flew near a big black hole one day.It sucked her in just like a bean.You won’t see HER on Halloween!

The deadline for nominating children’s and young adult books for the 2009 Cybils is tomorrow. Nominations will close at 11:59 p.m. on October 15th.

I will be serving as a second round judge in the Poetry Category this year. Following is the list of poetry books that were nominated and are eligible. If you don’t see your favorite poetry book of the past year on the list, by all means get thee over to the Cybils site and nominate it.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Tricia challenged us to write poems about October for her Poetry Stretch this week. I wrote a new acrostic for the stretch. I think it still needs to be tweaked a little—or a lot. I’m also posting some other autumn/October poems that I’ve posted previously at Wild Rose Reader.

Orange moon, disk of burnished copper, gleams in the sky, prowlingCats step gingerly through fallen leaves crisped by the cold,Toothy pumpkins smile tremulously in the dark, a flockOf geese honks farewell to trick-or-treaters toting sacks of sweets. WoeBetide those out at the witching hour when All Hallows’Eve swarms with ghosts who rise from their graves andReturn to spirit away unsuspecting souls before the month creaks closed like Dracula’s coffin.

Inspired by Joyce Sidman’s book Red Sings from Treetops, I wrote the Orange poem below for Color Poems, a post in which I encouraged my blog readers to write their own color poems.

The Orange of October

shines in the face

of a harvest moon,

grows plump and round in pumpkin patches,

flickers in the angled eyes of jack o’ lanterns…

and their crooked copper grins.

The Orange of October

flames in oak leaves and asters,

smells like cinnamon and nutmeg,

tastes like sweet potato pie.

Autumn Fire is from my unpublished collection of memoir poems entitled A Home for the Seasons.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The schedule for the 2009-2010 Speaker Series of the Massachusetts PAS North Shore Council of IRA has finally been set. Here are the dates and venues and names of the authors and illustrators who will be our featured speakers this school year.

About Melissa SweetMelissa Sweet is the author and/or illustrator of more than sixty books for children. Melissa has won a number of awards and acknowledgements for her picture books in recent years. TheBoy Who Drew Birds was included on the New York Public Library’s List of Best Books of 2004. In 2005, she received the Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for Baby Bear’s Chairs and the Maine Lupine Award for Carmine: A Little More Red. Two of Melissa’s books were designated as Best Illustrated Books of the Year by the New York Times—in 2005 and 2009. This year, Melissa received a Caldecott Honor Award for her stunning mixed-media illustrations in A River of Dreams: The Story of William Carlos Williams. Melissa is also the illustrator of the popular Pinky and Rex series of early readers. Information about the Fall Dinner Meeting of the PAS North Shore CouncilThe meeting will begin at 5:00 with a social hour during which Melissa Sweet will sign books. Attendees can purchase a number of Melissa Sweet’s most popular books at the yacht club. (Note: Payment for books must be made in cash or by check.)

The cost for our November dinner is $38 for members and $48 for non-members.

Dinner choices are:

Sliced Roast Beef with Bordelaise Sauce

Seafood Casserole with Scallops, Shrimp and Scrod.

If you are interested in attending our November dinner, email me. I have extra copies of the registration form. The deadline for registration is October 23rd.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Today I have a review of Button Up!: Wrinkled Rhymes by Alice Schertle. I was really excited when I learned many months ago that Schertle had written a new poetry book. I have been an admirer of her work ever since I read How Now, Brown Cow, her first published poetry collection. Button Up! is a delight from start to finish. Schertle's poems are infused with humor and a childlike sense of fun. The illustrations done by Petra Mathers, the perfect complement to Schertle’s text, express the same sense of playfulness and whimsy.

I was especially happy to find that Button Up! was collection of mask poems. (I love mask poems!) Button Up! contains fifteen point-of-view poems in which the author speaks in the voices of shoes, shoelaces, galoshes, a soccer jersey, bicycle helmet, jammies, dress-up clothes, and undies—all of which have their own personal stories to share. The characters wearing the aforementioned footwear, headwear, and clothing are anthropomorphized creatures—pigs, cats, birds, dogs, bears, alligators, etc. Mathers artfully imbues her animals with human facial expressions and body language.

Like Mathers’s animals, Schertle’s poems all have their own “personalities.” Their rhythms and rhyme schemes vary. The book of poems never gets bogged down in a boring “sameness.”

I asked Alice Schertle if there was anything she could tell me about where she got the inspiration for this book, how long it took her to complete the collection, or any other interesting facts she’d like to share about Button Up!.

Alice responded:Button Up!started with one poem, Jennifer's Shoes--and that was years ago. I wrote that one in the course of fiddling with shoe poems in general, liked it, and found it handy to use when I'd talk about mask, or persona poems. Much more recently I began adding to my stash of poems in which kids' jackets and shoelaces and hats are doing the talking and it began to look like a collection. The trick was in finding the duds that children would recognize and trying to give them a bit of individual personality. Once I got going, assembling, choosing and discarding, it probably took half a year. I found myself chuckling as I wrote: always a good sign.

I, too, chuckled as I read the poems in Button Up!. I’m sure you will too!

Here are some tasty tidbits from a few of the book’s poems to give you a flavor of the delicious verses in Button Up!:

From Bob’s Bicycle

Bob’s on his bikeand I’m on Bob.I’m Bob’s helmet.I’m on the job.

From Jennifer’s Shoes

We are learning the waysof Jennifer’s world:the way that Jennifer’stoes are curled,the softness of carpet,the steepness of stair,the curve of the rungunder Jennifer’s chair…

From Jack’s Soccer Jersey

When Jack plays soccer we get our kicks.I’m Jack’s jersey.I’m number 6.

From Clyde’s Costume

I’m a gingham sheet and I used to sleeptucked into the guest room bed.One day—surprise! Clyde cut out eyesand slipped me over his head.

And here is the first stanza of my favorite poem in the collection—Emily’s Undies:

About Me

I worked as an elementary school teacher for more than three decades and as a school librarian for three years. I also taught a children's literature course at Boston University from 2002-2008. I served on the advisory board of the Keene State College Children’s Literature Festival from 2006-2008 and as a member of the NCTE Poetry Committee from 2009-2012. I am now retired and write poetry for children. "Things to Do," my first children's book, will be published by Chronicle Books in February of 2017.